L’entreprise française (the French company) Ubisoft is celebrating its 30 year anniversary! L’entreprise is one of the biggest video game publishers in the world, but l’histoire (the story, the history) of la grande entreprise begins in the French countryside.

Ubisoft is l’entreprise behind some of the most well known jeux vidéo (video games) ever made. It’s hard to have not come across Ubisoft at least a few times if you have ever played les jeux vidéo. Even outside of les fans des jeux vidéo (video game fans) names like Rayman and Aassassin’s Creed are well known!

Comme Ubisoft fête ses trente ans (Seeing how Ubisoft is celebrating its thirty year anniversary) there’s no better time to learn a bit about l’entreprise behind some of the most popular jeux vidéo on the market.

L’entreprise was created by cinq frères (five brothers) in the countryside of la Bretagne (Brittany), in Northwest France. Les frères came from a family that traditionally focused on agriculture and was far removed from anything high tech like les jeux vidéo.

Cependant (however), In 1986 les frères formed Ubisoft, looking to take advantage of le nouveau marché des jeux (the new games’ market). Although the company is now massive with offices à travers le monde (all over the world), le siège social (the headquarters) is still à Rennes en Bretagne.

Les Bretons (Bretons, people from Brittany) are proud of their origins and culture, leading some people to think le nom de l’entreprise (the name of the company) is tied to the region. On dit (it’s said) that the Ubi in Ubisoft is actually un acronyme for an independence movement:

Union des Bretons Indépendants
Union of Independent Bretons

Les frères have denied any such claim, stating that le nom was simply chosen because “ça sonnait bien (it sounded good)”, clarifying that Ubisoft is a combination of the words ubiquité (ubiquity) and software the English word for logiciel.

Next time you play Far Cry, Just Dance, Prince of Persia, or n’importe quel jeu vidéo d’Ubisoft, don’t forget to say joyeux anniversaire!